Five days of marathon contract talks between negotiators for State System of Higher Education and its faculty union and they have nothing to show for it.

No agreement. No new dates set for returning to the bargaining table. A $159 million salary package rejected. And strong likelihood that a strike date could be set before the weekend is out.

Talks broke down on Wednesday following another daylong session of talks that was hoped would bring the State System closer to an agreement with the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties and end a 15-month-long contract dispute.

Instead, the faculty walked away from the table to begin preparing for what would be the first-ever faculty strike in the 33-year-old State System's history and could disrupt classes for more than 100,000 students who attend Bloomsburg, California, Cheyney, Clarion, East Stroudsburg, Edinboro, Indiana, Kutztown, Lock Haven, Mansfield, Millersville, Shippensburg, Slippery Rock and West Chester universities.

Union leaders told system officials on Wednesday a strike would be called no later than Oct. 30 if a contract settlement wasn't reached.

APSCUF President Ken Mash essentially called the negotiations that played out over five of the last six days a waste of time.

"I am leaving here super angry," Mash said following a daylong session. "It feels like the only way reason they wanted to meet was to say that they met. They've taken some of their proposals and just reworded them in different ways. Another proposal they made it even worse than anything we had talked about. I think really truly their only goal was to say they talked the talk."

The union, which represents the 5,500 faculty members and coaches, has been working under an expired contract since June 30, 2015, and its members recently authorized calling a strike.

System officials indicated in their release about the marathon bargaining days that an offer was put on the table that would raise faculty pay by nearly 12 percent over the next three years, a salary package that carried a $159 million price tag.

They indicated the State System faculty are already among the highest paid in the nation, ranking in the top 10 to 15 percent among their peers at similar public colleges and universities. The average total earnings of a full-time faculty member at a System university last year was just under $100,000, not including benefits.

But that offer was contingent on the faculty agreeing to healthcare plan changes that other system employees have already accepted along with other changes that the system estimates would save $70 million. The changes to the health plan alone would save $22 million, according to the news release.

"Our faculty provide extraordinary contributions to the success of both our students and our universities, and we recognize that fact," said State System spokesman Kenn Marshall in a statement. "At the same time, the universities are facing their most serious fiscal challenges ever. That also is a fact. We must balance both of these factors in order to achieve a settlement that is fair to everyone, especially to our students."

Marshall said the system is open to finding additional cost savings through proposals the union put on the table. It also proposed eight additional bargaining sessions to work through the issues including meeting through the weekend but APSCUF declined.

Mash said he couldn't see the point. The way the union sees it the system showed no movement off its original economic package and put everything back on the table that the union viewed as hurting the quality of education the universities provide.

"They pretty much took out all the progress we had made and added stuff to make it worse," he said. "They might as well have just reached across the table and stuck the fingers in our eyes. It would have saved them the trouble of writing things down."

The union has a meeting with its campus chapter presidents set for Friday and Saturday with a strike workshop to follow. Mash said people with strike experience from across the country are flying in to provide instruction on how to organize a strike.

"I don't see how we leave this weekend without having a strike date set," Mash said.

System officials this week asked the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Board to initiate fact finding. The board could consider the system's request on Friday.

Fact-finding would bring in a neutral third party to review each sides' proposals and form some non-binding recommendations that could help to settle their differences. While fact-finding was going on which could last up to 40 days, the union would be barred from striking.

"What they are trying to do is to stall this with the hopes of pushing into finals weeks to get our students upset and the parents upset and it's nonsense," Mash said. "What they need to do is come to the table and actually negotiate a deal."

Short of that, the union asked the system to go to binding arbitration to bring an end to the dispute. But Marshall said the system's governing board "cannot cede its responsibility over the final decision on a new collective bargaining agreement to a third-party."